Debate

In Western countries since World War II, the development of transport infrastructure and transport volume has been a central stimulus for economic development and growth.Even though Western Europe has a very dense transport network and a high traffic volume, both enlargement of the network and its volume is still recommended and asked for to enhance economic growth (e.g.Europäische Kommission 1994).However, environmental drawbacks such as air pollution, noise, land-use, destruction of habitats, climate change, and health impacts have become increasingly pressing. 1As a reaction to this, in the last decade, transport policy has become more environmentally aware, and sustainability of the transport sector (especially environmental and social sustainability) has become an overall objective of further transport development (OECD 1997).Switzerland is strongly affected by environmental problems induced by traffic, and often traffic has been considered as the country's most serious environmental problem.Indeed, transport has always been important in Switzerland.The country provides a major traffic junction and the fastest transit through the Alps.The impacts are regionally very different, burdening the regions of the Alps the most (Ott et al. 1999).This constellation seems to explain early Swiss efforts in transport research and especially in evaluating external costs.Currently, there seems to be a consensus on the need to monetarize external costs of transport and make bearing transport users the full amount of cost.However, the accuracy of quantitative data available is often questioned: For instance, recently the Swiss transport lobby has published a new study to call up-to-date monetarization into question (Büttner 2000).Despite these problems with quantitative data, more and more studies on the monetary effects of infrastructure projects or environmental side effects of transport are available and a consensus on the magnitude of cost is being established.For this reason, a debate on the advantages and disadvantages of economic valuations and its relevance for policy design and especially transport policy in Switzerland and Europe suggests itself

Economics · Pigou effect · Political science · Politics · European Union Policy and Governance · Law · Public Administration and Political Analysis

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